Everybody's Famous in a Small Town

Yesterday, 4-7 p.m., were simultaneous signature drives all over the state to recall Governor Dunleavy. Details why here.

The News Miner reported that "thousands" had shown up to the Fairbanks site. Surely several times that number showed up in Anchorage. But the Recall Dunleavy campaign has said that they will not release the numbers of signatures collected, at least not any time soon. Once again, I was relieved that it was all very legit and very careful. I was instructed to sign very carefully only within the box on the paper, and I input my voter ID number. There were a lot of people, by Fairbanks standards.

I had never seen the parking lot so full:


There were lots of people to sign (And lots of dogs to pet):


And a few befuddled tourists wandering around, whom I'm sure will have an interesting story to tell if they learn what they walked into!


The lines moved quickly, so we escaped in under 20 minutes (although not before I petted a Great Dane puppy!). When we left, traffic was backed up along three different main arteries approaching the park for half a mile in each direction. A good sign! I cannot recall being pleased to see gridlock before!

When we got home, half a dozen or so people emailed me to inform me that apparently DL and I had our mugs on the front page of the News Miner:


I was quite horrified at first. I am a rather private person and don't like to be "out there". Not to mention, quite a few commenters on the article were pretty awful and irrationally angry, calling us communist socialist weenie liberal snowflakes and so on and so forth. I should not have read them, although it is amusing for me to imagine one of those angry people calling DL a weenie liberal snowflake to his face.

Anyway, everybody's famous in a small town, and academics are just never anonymous at all. We are on our department websites, and we have publication histories, and our names show up at outreach events and at Engineers Week and the Career Fair and the local middle school Science Night and all those things. So *shrug*. It is what it is.

DL is not even remotely bothered. I mean, I had to talk myself out of being bothered; it never even occurred to him to be bothered. It is interesting how different your reactions are to things when you are a 6'5" white guy who looked like an adult starting when he was 14. I don't believe he has ever felt intimated in his life. But it is very endearing how shocked he is when I report that sometimes people are rude or mean to me. He goes, "Whaaaaat? People are RUDE to you??" :)

Edit: Nope, I was mistaken. They *are* releasing counts. Apparently, "More than 10,000 Alaskans across the state signed an application Thursday to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy, with approximately 3,100 of those coming from Fairbanks area residents, according to a Friday news release from Recall Dunleavy."